Part wildlife documentary, part urban love letter. Kedi may only be a slender 79 minutes long, but it’s a lyrical and surprising philosophical tribute to the therapeutic power of pets.

Complicated and long but deftly handled adventure/caper/satire that ends up being thoroughly entertaining

Compelling and vivid, it's another fine piece of work from an up-and-coming talent.

Feminist scholarship this ain’t; think Showgirls if it were directed by David Cronenberg. But give yourself permission to revel in the excess and be rewarded with an uproariously good time.

Tying up his trilogy in style, Seidl's film unsettles and provokes with wit and composure.

Even if it needed one last push to make it truly exceptional, there’s a lot to enjoy here. And Soderbergh once again attracts a cast it’s a pleasure to spend time with.

The vocal cast are great fun, and the animation is smooth and vibrant. Except for a few treacly songs, this is great entertainment for all.

A sci-fi thriller starring Robert Pattinson suggests that Claire Denis has gone all mainstream. But High Life is the filmmaker at her most dark, a mesmerising, patience-testing, violent exploration in the darkest reaches of outer and inner space.

Alternating gritty realism and red‑hued fantasy, this is one of those '70s films that wears well, universal in its heart while picking out specifics which are exactly of their time.

Despite its familiar story beats, Eggers’ retelling suffocates like a coffin, right up to its chilling final shot. Lily-Rose Depp is full-bloodedly committed, and Bill Skarsgård’s fiend gorges with terrible fury.

Thoughtful, emotional and often surprisingly funny, Terence Davies offers a rich if inconsistent portrait of a unique poet long deserving of a big-screen study.

Despite the luminous Lombard and the venomous March, this is perhaps better for its idea than its execution.

The breakneck pace, the seething sense of menace and the unflinching attitude to sex, drugs and violence coagulate into a nastily authentic take on the seediness and venality of modern villainy.

Kung Fu Hustle pummels "The Matrix" trilogy into a puddle.

The sheer terror of Meru Peak, the mountain-climber’s ultimate nemesis, is confronted in a vertiginous, breath-stealing video diary. Book a back seat at the big screen, and don’t look down.

A breezy, brilliant treat. Iannucci may have softened the bite of his comedy but replaces it with something remarkably optimistic and buoyant, telling a story as joyously relevant as it was a century-and-a-half ago.

Alfre Woodard gives an unforgettably moving performance in Chinonye Chukwu’s slow-burning, perfectly observed drama about the repercussions of state-sanctioned violence, in which the stakes could hardly be higher.

A thoughtful, affecting debut feature from Tremblay that puts a necessary spotlight on Indigenous peoples — featuring another exceptional performance from Lily Gladstone.

With a more accomplished script and an actor of rather more technical prowess than Reeves (nabbing the Prince Hal role), this may just have worked. Here, it is just squirmingly embarrassing stuff.

DiCaprio shines, dispelling fears that he hasn’t the weight to carry such a complex, forceful role.

Chinonye Chukwu’s restrained approach replaces dramatic fireworks with an absorbing, slow-burning study of a broken woman’s politicisation. She is superbly served by star Danielle Deadwyler, who transforms Till from a good film into a gripping one.

An interesting piece from Hungary with much to enjoy, only slightly dampened by the occasional clunky device.

Interesting for it's historical notoriety, but overlong and dull in places.

An animated film showing you “how it’s done, done, done” — as HUNTR/X would put it — this is a stunning musical treat, a joy for all ages. Now warm up the vocal cords and bring on the sequel.

An ambitious, provocative swing, Nope feels like that increasingly rare beast: an original blockbuster. Unspooling a horrific parody of Hollywood’s hubris, it’s a crowd-pleaser that wonders about the cost of pleasing a crowd.

The Duke's last hurrah is one of the very best of a cycle of 70s movies that served as obituaries for the Western itself.

Pixar sequel-phobes be damned — this is a dazzling and technically impressive return to form that delivers a similar high to Finding Nemo without feeling like a retread.

Ethical screed aside, what does A Clockwork Orange have to offer beyond its curiosity value and a crash course in humanism? Well, for a start there's Kubrick's dazzling visual style which, rather in the manner that Trainspotting did 25 years later, translates the substance of an "unfilmable" book into the language of cinema. And at the dramatic core of the film is a simply astonishing performance by Malcolm MacDowell as Alex. It also features an orgy sequence that would have had Von Stroheim laughing his jackboots off — you'll certainly never listen to the William Tell Overture in quite the same way again. And as for Singin' In The Rain...

Herzog’s planted rather too firmly in his discomfort zone, but Bale once again confirms himself as one of our most intense, committed and watchable actors.

Good performances from a strong cast and paranoid plotting enough to keep even the staunchest of remake nay-sayers quiet. Hitchockian production with a modern twist.

Small kids will love the waddlesome dancing and colourful animation, but older viewers will likely be disturbed by the story’s darker elements.

A clarinet player who also runs a health food store is frozen and brought back in the future by anti-government radicals in order to assist them in their attempts to overthrow an oppressive government. When he goes off on his own, he begins to explore this brave new world that has Orgasmatron booths to replace sex and confessional robots.

Treating his seafood substantially better than Oldboy, Jiro is a miracle of perfectionism married to expertise. The same can said for Gelb's loving documentary.

A chilling concoction, featuring a remarkable transformation of Nicolas Cage and a reminder of Maika Monroe’s star quality. Submit to its demonic darkness for a singular, sensory cinematic horror experience.

The heartfelt telling of a truly extraordinary true story with a mesmerising central performance.

Jollied up with some fun anecdotes from Hollywood's great and good, this is entertaining, if hardly hugely revelatory stuff.

So much more than a one-take gimmick movie, Victoria is a stunning cinematic achievement. Full of twists that feel authentic and believable characters, it grips from the first compelling frame to the last.

This is - gasp! - a Hollywood movie actually daring to bare its teeth at silly American flag-waving.

This is one of those documentaries that stays with you for years. The injustice infuriates and the story, simply and deftly told, breaks your heart.

If it’s not God-tier level Kore-eda, Broker explores the toughest themes — emotional and physical abandonment — with the gentlest touch. Treat yourself.

The film is a little too long, but makes up for it with a strong cast and enthralling action.

You have to be in the right mood for it, but this is one of the season’s finest films.

Marmaladen with gloriously silly jokes, pitch-perfect performances and incidental detail, this is a warm, witty and wondrously inventive great big bear-hug of a movie.

A remarkable ensemble of performers unite for this combustible, timely chamber-piece that hails the return of Polley as an ambitious and empirical filmmaker.

While it’s a bit of a slow burner, Mendelsohn is so compelling, there’s really no need for things to speed up.

It's a genuine delight and a definite thumbs aloft for kids of about six upwards.

A joyous exploration of family life that will touch and surprise.

A moving drama set against beautiful Latin American backdrops - just don't expect fireworks.

Creepy Price in all his gnarled splendour.

Winning WW II story of british pluck that manages to side-step the propaganda trap.

A slight but mightily effective adrenaline rush of a movie, with powerful performances all round and precise direction from Kitty Green. Watch it on the big screen and allow it to properly get your heart pounding and palms sweating.

This looks, in retrospect, like nothing much more than a glossy soap passed off as serious drama.

Inevitably, there is a tacked-on quality here, yet Cousins’ flair for providing visual pleasure means that, like that first champagne cocktail of the night, The Next Generation bubbles with sparkling uplift.

Outstanding account of a pivotal moment in small-screen history.

Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker's script is tight, and Badham directs the whole thing with economy and pace but it's Matthew Broderick's film.

Even the excellent Gong has a tough time trying to twist her character into a tragic heroine, while the utter despair to which sympathetic characters are condemned suggests a significant point in Zhang's career, but does nothing to relieve the viewer's ennui.

Thoroughly charming, and thoroughly deserving of its cult status.

A Hitchcockian Poltergeist meets Single White Female, it's exactly as confused as that sounds, but just as intriguing. Stewart shows she’s now one of the most interesting actresses of her generation.

Superbly judging tonal shifts and juggling disparate storylines, this snapshot of a Refice street reveals the class, gender, racial and historical fissures in Brazilian society, while also making for riveting drama right down to the shocking sting in the tail.

Shannon Murphy’s debut film is a refreshing take on a familiar subgenre, offering a nuanced depiction of a family dealing with the worst-case scenario with humanity and sweetness.

Wonderful to look at, this is a more adult, more complex affair than its animated, and more entertaining, forebear. Still, it’s Disney’s best live-action adaptation yet.

As a spectacular war film with a powerful moral dimension, Zulu pre-dates Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan by more than three decades. Like the defence of Rorke's Drift itself, its legend grows with the passing of time.

Still one of the most thrilling and thoroughly entertaining of all musicals.

Everything about this hard-hitting film is restrained, like a breath tightly held, and all the more powerful for it.

Noah Bamubach’s While We’re Young is the best Woody Allen film of 2015. A fast, funny, smart take on generational jealousy, with Ben Stiller and Adam Driver on great form.

In tackling homelessness with deep empathy, one of our most exciting young actors proves himself to be a bold new voice in British filmmaking. Leave some talent for the rest of us, Dickinson.

It's Newman's performance itself that really makes this film work and helps it truly get close to Lumet's own '12 Angry Men'.

Get this — Matthew McConaughey is currently the most exciting acting talent at work in movies. Next up, the simple business of a Christopher Nolan.

The most batshit music biopic since Todd Haynes did the Karen Carpenter story with Barbie dolls, Michael Gracey pulls off the biggest cinematic surprise of the year. An absolute blast. 

The year's most fascinating and frightening doc so far, The Imposter delves far beneath the hysterical tabloid headlines.

It sounds like a downer but A Single Man is exciting, emotionally alive filmmaking, a potent cocktail of style and substance. And Firth thoroughly deserves the Oscar.

It wouldn’t be like Martin Scorsese to pick up the tabs on a simple sequel, and this glossy, hard-spoken pool drama, a follow-on from The Hustler, never aligns to the simple organising principle of repeat value.

A Jamaican classic with an awesome OST.

A worthy addition to the canon of Iraq war films, The Messenger has a gentle humanity that creeps under your skin. Look out for a terrific Harrelson turn, too.

Woody's neuroses are still gloriously present, and the whole thing is made accessible by Herbert Ross' dynamic direction.

Occasionally slides into a breathless fan tribute, but nonetheless an affectionate and candid portrait of a troubled artist.

Acerbic, unexpected and quietly heart-warming without ever approaching sappy, this takes a no-nonsense approach to big issues - life, love and ageing - and never feels heavy-handed. We should all be so lucky in our grandmothers.

This is a suberbly structured thriller whose excellence is aided and abetted by a spirited cast.

Steven Soderbergh’s first-person experiment is a gamble that pays off massively. This is an eerie family drama that turns the horror genre inside out and infuses it with greater empathy.

Gibson is surprisingly uncharismatic, but Miller makes up for it with whizz bang action.

Robbie and Janney are flawless in a compelling and corrective account of a misunderstood figure; one of the more darkly funny biopics you’ll ever see.

A comedically gruesome take on love’s maddening effects — even more so than last year’s Together — Obsession is so fresh and exhilarating, one can forgive its familiar origins. Curry Barker is set for big things.

This spends more time on the tensions between the dominant trio than their landmark campaigning.

A hit in Berlin, the Taviani siblings' documentary has plenty of wit and punch, although compared to the best of the medium - "Man On Wire," for instance - it sometimes comes off as guileless and clunky.

Still regarded as one of the steamiest movie's of all time, Body Heat is a fantastic exponenet of how noir has developed.

Wielding inspiration and uplift in equal measure, this musical odyssey is one of the cinematic journeys of the year. Don't miss it.

Maestro never truly gets under its subject’s skin, but it’s mightily impressive, full of brilliant filmmaking, many memorable scenes and a superb Carey Mulligan walking away with the entire movie.

A very watchable old-school blockbuster crowd-pleaser. Ryan Gosling and an alien made of rocks are the best space-based double-act since R2-D2 and C3-PO.

Generic title, strong movie. Relic is smart (but never smart-arse) horror. What it lacks in incident it makes up for in a troika of top turns and tangible tension in service to an interesting parable about the gnawing effects of dementia.

Silver remains exceptionally clear-eyed. The result is a powerful, gripping and deeply shocking film, and a contemptuous critique of Florida’s stand-your-ground law.

While it’s more sprawling than the other entries, Alex Wheatle is Small Axe’s strongest character piece, Wheatle’s coming-of-age and process of ‘unlearning’ the dogma of England’s white upper classes told with powerful emotivity and clarity.

Judd is well cast as the small town gal looking to start afresh and gain her independence in this chick flick about learning who you are. The supporting cast allow Judd to spar of them, with the result a pleasing but by no means exciting story.

A Molotov cocktail of laughs and anger, Chi-Raq is a powerful state of a nation address. The result is the most creatively exciting Lee has been in a decade.

Surprisingly exciting and laugh-out-loud funny, Thelma is a warm-hearted joyride. If anything, it’ll make you really want to pick up the phone and call your own grandma.

Surprising success with what could be a formulaic disgruntled teen movie. Fast paced with a satisfyingly unhappy ending.

Visceral and heady, this is a blood-soaked, all-American fable that’s as if Thelma And Louise literally went on steroids. Rose Glass is a force to be reckoned with.

On the strength of only two films, McDonagh and Gleeson are a director/star team on a par with Ford/Wayne, Fellini/Mastroianni or Scorsese/De Niro. Calvary is gripping, moving, funny and troubling, down to an uncompromising yet uncynical finish.

Audrey Hepburn is delicious as Holly and the Henry Mancini score is in the class of elite soundtracks. [Review of re-release]